Innovations: Apple isnt just satisfied reinventing health care, its targeting clinical trials as well

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When Apple announced, last year, that it was developing a watch that had the functions of a medical device, it became clear that the company was eyeing the $3 trillion health care industry; that the tech industry sees medicine as the next frontier for exponential growth. Apples recent announcement of ResearchKit shows that it has an even greater ambition: It wants to also transform the pharmaceutical industry by changing the way clinical trials are done.

Apple isnt alone. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Samsung and hundreds of start-ups also see the market potential and have big plans. They are about to disrupt health care in the same way in which Netflix decimated the video-rental industry and Uber is changing transportation.

The upshot? We will receive better health care for a fraction of the cost.

This is happening because several technologies such as computers, sensors, robotics and artificial intelligence are advancing at exponential rates. Their power and performance are increasing dramatically as their prices fall and footprints shrink.

We will soon have sensors that monitor almost every aspect of our bodys functioning, inside and out. They will be packaged in watches, Band-Aids, clothing, and contact lenses. They will be in our toothbrushes, toilets and showers. They will be embedded in smart pills that we swallow. The data from these will be uploaded into cloud-based platforms such as Apples HealthKit.

Artificial intelligencebased apps will constantly monitor our health data, predict disease and warn us when we are about to get sick. They will advise us on what medications we should take and how we should improve our lifestyle and habits. Watson, for example, the technology that IBM developed to defeat human players on the TV show Jeopardy, has already become capable of diagnosing cancer more accurately than human physicians can. Soon it will be better than humans are in making any medical diagnosis.

The key innovation that Apple just announced is ResearchKit, a platform for app builders to capture and upload data from patients who have a particular disease. Our smartphones already monitor our activity levels, lifestyles and habits. They know where we go, how fast we move, and when we sleep. Some smartphone apps already try to judge our emotions and health based on this information; to be sure, they can ask us questions.

ResearchKit apps will enable constant monitoring of symptoms and of reactions to medications. Today, clinical trials are done on a relatively small number of patients, and pharmaceutical companies sometimes choose to ignore information that does not suit them. Data that our devices gather will be used to accurately analyze what medications patients have taken, in order to determine which of them truly had a positive effect; which simply created adverse reactions and new ailments; and which did both.

The best part is that the clinical trials will be continuing they wont stop once the medicines are approved by the FDA.

Apple has already developed five apps that target the most prevalent health concerns: diabetes, asthma, Parkinsons disease, cardiovascular disease, and breast cancer. The Parkinsons app can, for example, measure hand tremors, through an iPhone touchscreen; vocal trembling, using the microphone; and gait, as you walk with the device.

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Innovations: Apple isnt just satisfied reinventing health care, its targeting clinical trials as well

Aerospace industry in for big business in M'sia

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Business Desk

The Star

Publication Date : 23-03-2015

The aerospace industry is big business within the next 15 years, the Government is projecting the industry, which includes aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services as well as manufacturing of high-tech components, to generate total revenue of 55.2 billion ringgit (US$14.87 billion).

It will also create 32,000 high skilled jobs by 2030.

Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) deputy chief executive office Phang Ah Thong told StarBiz that this objective, as laid out in the new Malaysian Aerospace Industry Blueprint 2015-2030, was achievable.

Last year, the local aerospace industry generated 19 billion ringgit in revenue and 4.2 billion ringgit in investments, with 19,500 jobs created. The blueprint was launched by prime minister Najib Tun Razak at the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition 2015.

By 2034, it is estimated that there will be 36,000 aircraft worldwide. Asia will require 13,000 aircraft to meet demand.

For this reason, both Airbus and Boeing are lining up business plans to increase their supply chain in Asia to more than 20 per cent from less than 5 per cent presently to meet the production needs of single-aisle planes, Phang said.

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Aerospace industry in for big business in M'sia

From Rocket Science to Low Rider: Former Engineer Builds Adult Big Wheels

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Many people who grew up in the 1970s, '80s and '90s will likely remember cruising around the neighborhood on a Marx Big Wheel, a low-riding tricycle made of plastic. Now, a Big Wheel-style bike is available for adults, thanks to the work of a former aerospace engineer.

As a kid, Matt Armbruster dreamed of being an astronaut. As an adult, he got to work on mechanical systems for satellites and planetary spacecraft, including a number of different NASA spacecraft. But today, Armbruster's biggest engineering accomplishment is building low-riding tricycles for adults.

It may not seem quite as noble as building things that expand humanity's understanding of the universe, but Armbruster said the power of these trikes which look like adult-size versions of the Marx Big Wheel for kids is something to behold. [Cosmic Playtime:Toys in Space(Photos)]

"The original Marx Big Wheel was kind of like the best toy ever for entire generations," Armbruster said. "And it has a very deep emotional pull. As a kid, it's like your first taste of freedom and moving under your own power. And when you crashed it, it taught you how to take a hit and keep going. It's a deep childhood memory, and you see that when people ride them."

Maybe it's just the power of hindsight, but Armbruster said bikes and space have both been recurring themes in his life.

"In high school, my jobs were in bike shops, so I loved mechanical stuff," Armbruster said. "But I wanted to become an astronaut. At the time, the two ways to become an astronaut were through the Air Force or becoming a mission specialist. So I chose aerospace engineering."

Armbruster spent 16 years at Starsys Research Corp., which is now part of Sierra Nevada Corp (among other things, Sierra Nevada is working on a design for a private spacecraft called the Dream Chaser. Many companies, including NASA, contracted Starsys to design and build mechanical systems of satellites and spacecraft, Armbruster said. He worked personally on projects for multiple NASA missions, including the New Horizons mission to Pluto, Geo Eye and Worldview, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, the Sojourner rover and the Cassini spacecraft. Once, in order to test a component that would eventually go on the Spitzer Space Telescope, he flew in the Vomit Comet (an airplane that briefly simulates weightlessness) in order to test the component in microgravity.

After seven years on the engineering side, Armbruster moved intothe marketing department at Starsys. Then in 2011, after a total of 16 years at the company, he decided to take a leap into the unknown. After a few months, he realized he already had an idea of what he wanted to do: make a Big Wheel tricycle for adults.

Introduced to the world in 1969, Marx Big Wheels were tricycles made entirely from blown (hollow) plastic, with a low-slug seat almost brushing the ground and a front wheel the size of a manhole cover. Instead of being attached with a chain, the pedals connected directly to the front wheel.

During his college years in Boulder, Colorado, Armbruster started a community pub crawl in which adults had to ride from bar to bar on a Big Wheel trike. (The so-called Big Wheel Rally continues to this day, and has since evolved into a fundraiser for the Saint Joseph's Hospital Foundation, to benefit the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).

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From Rocket Science to Low Rider: Former Engineer Builds Adult Big Wheels

Agnosticism – Wikipedia

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Agnosticismul este concepia filozofic potrivit creia adevrul anumitor afirmaii, mai ales afirmaii teologice privind existena unui Dumnezeu sau a unor zei, este fie necunoscut, fie imposibil de aflat.

Termenul agnostic a fost creat de Thomas Henry Huxley n 1869 i este folosit i pentru descrierea celor neconvini de existena zeitilor sau altor aspecte religioase. Cuvntul agnostic provine din greac, compus din particula a (fr) i gnosis (cunoatere). Agnosticismul nu este doar contrar gnosticismului, ci tuturor dogmelor religioase, pe care le consider nedemonstrabile i prin urmare lipsite de orice certitudine.

Agnosticii pot afirma fie c nu este posibil s existe cunoatere spiritual, fie c ei, personal, nu dispun de o asemenea cunoatere. n ambele cazuri este expus scepticism fa de doctrinele religioase.

Atitudinea acelora care prefer s nu se pronune asupra problemelor care nu intr n cmpul datelor experienei.

Termenul a luat natere n ambientul pozitivismului.

Dei nu neag existena lui Dumnezeu, agnosticismul spune c Dumnezeu nu poate fi cunoscut, iar existena lui nu poate fi probat (demonstrat).

Susinut n forma lui cea mai rigid de Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) este i poziia mprtit de toi aceia care nici mai nainte n-au recunoscut posibilitatea de a ti dac Dumnezeu exist sau nu.

De exemplu, pentru Immanuel Kant Dumnezeu, sustras cunoaterii teoretice, rmne un postulat al raiunii practice; Friedrich Schleiermacher consider religia fondat pe sentiment; Carl Gustav Jung l vede pe Dumnezeu ca pe un produs al abisului incontient al eului.

Opunndu-se agnosticismului, n primul Conciliu din Vatican, Biserica Catolic a susinut c plecnd de la lucrurile create, Dumnezeu poate fi cunoscut cu certitudine prin lumina natural a minii. Aceast poziie pleac de la convingerea c inteligena uman este legitim deschis transcendenei i, prin urmare, este n msur s-l ntlneasc pe Dumnezeu n cercetarea Adevrului, cu condiia subneleas de a nu contrazice dogmele catolice i autoritatea Papei drept conductor unic al tuturor cretinilor.

Agnosticismul poate fi mprit n mai multe subcategorii, toate fiind categorisiri foarte recente. Printre variaii se numr:

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Agnosticism - Wikipedia

Technology and Persuasion

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Persuasive technologies surround us, and theyre growing smarter. How do these technologies work? And why?

GSN Games, which designs mobile games like poker and bingo, collects billions of signals every day from the phones and tablets its players are usingrevealing everything from the time of day they play to the types of game they prefer to how they deal with failure. If two people were to download a game onto the same type of phone simultaneously, in as little as five minutes their games would begin to divergeeach one automatically tailored to its users style of play.

Yet GSN does not simply track customers preferences and customize its services accordingly, as many digital businesses do. In an effort to induce players to play longer and try more games, it uses the data it pulls from phones to watch for signs that they are tiring. Largely by measuring how frequently, how fervently, and how quickly you press on the screen, the company can predict with a high degree of accuracy just when you are likely to lose interestgiving it the chance to suggest other games long before that happens.

The games are free, but GSN shows ads and sells virtual items that are useful to players, so the longer the company can persuade someone to play, the more money it can make. Its quickly growing revenue and earnings are a testament to how well this strategy works, says Portman Wills, GSNs chief information officer. Along with factors such as smart engineering and creative design, using data to shape persuasive tactics is a key to the companys success.

The idea that computers, mobile phones, websites, and other technologies could be designed to influence peoples behavior and even attitudes dates back to the early 1990s, when Stanford professor B.J. Foggcoined the term persuasive computing (later broadened to persuasive technology). But today many companies have taken that one step further: using technologies that measure customer behavior to design products that are not just persuasive but specifically aimed at forging new habits.

If habit formation as a business model was once largely limited to casinos and cigarette manufacturers, today technology has opened up the option to a broad range of companies. Insights from psychology and behavioral economics about how and why people make certain choices, combined with digital technologies, social media, and smartphones, have enabled designers of websites, apps, and a wide variety of other products to create sophisticated persuasive technologies.

How these technologies work and why are the big questions this Business Report will answer.

With new digital tools, companies that might once have been simply hardware makers (such as Jawbone) or service providers (Expedia) are now taking on the role of influencer, attempting to shape the habits of their users by exploiting the psychological underpinnings of how people make choices.

While Expedia is trying to design its website so as to trigger someone to visit daily, Jawbone has built features into its fitness bands and other products that executive Kelvin Kwong grandly describes as using our best understanding of how the brain works to get you to act. And Kwong says its working. Sending carefully designed messages to people wearing Jawbone fitness trackers has helped them get an additional 23 minutes of sleep per night on average, and move 27 percent more, the company says.

Habit Design, which bills itself as the leading habit training program, employs game designers and people with PhDs in behavioral science. It says it has created a platform that keeps 80 percent of participants in corporate wellness programs involved over three months. Traditional programs like seminars or counseling, by contrast, generally lose 80 percent of participants in the first 10 days, according to Michael Kim, a former Microsoft executive who is now Habit Designs CEO.

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Technology and Persuasion

REVIEW: The scars of war – Magazine – DAWN.COM

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Carthage explores the psychological trauma of a post-war American nation

By Aneeqa Wattoo

IN war, there are no innocent victims, Sartre quoted Jules Romains in his essay, Existentialism and Humanism. Romainss quote opens up a question that lies at the heart of Joyce Carol Oatess new novel, Carthage: are there absolute victims in any war? And furthermore, is any sort of redemption truly possible for anyone who believes he has committed a crime?

Set in Carthage, a small city in New England, where the novels protagonists, the Mayfield family live, the novel opens with a search group that includes 53-year-old Zeno searching for his 19-year-old daughter, Cressida, who has gone missing. Soon, Zenos family learns that Cressida was last seen in the company of Brett Kincaid, Carthages celebrated Iraqi war veteran. For the family, this information is baffling; Brett is also the former fiance of Juliet, Cressidas sister. In the sheer horror of the ensuing days, Cressidas family is confronted by a range of unanswered questions: why was the quiet, deeply introverted Cressida meeting with Brett at all? Also, was Brett involved in her disappearance? This is something the police considers when they arrest him the following day.

Oates does not provide the reader with easy explanations. Instead, she leaves them with an instinctual desire for clarity and answers in a novel that often shifts its narrative voice, relaying the ex-perience of each member of the Mayfield family after the disappearance, separately in first person. Through these accounts, the reader slowly begins to identify the cracks in the ostensibly perfect family life of the Mayfields. Zenos relationship with his wife, Arlette for example, slowly disintegrates as the trauma of losing a child allows Arlette to disengage from her marriage and start a separate, more independent life without the protective aura of Zenos subtly dominating personality.

Cressidas relationship with her sister, too as the novel shifts into the past is revealed to be marked by a deep and abiding resentment. The generally praised Juliet, who is lauded by her par-ents and their friends as the pretty one is the object of Cressidas resentment, and part of her desire for escape from her life at Carthage. However, her envy and the love-hate dynamic between the sisters, as portrayed in the novel, seem to be neither very surprising nor original (it brings to mind the highly popularised novel, My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult). Oates descriptions of Juliet as the pretty sister and Cressida as the smart one, in addition, appears reductive, and forces the reader to neglect the individual complexity of each character by setting up the clichd dichotomy of beauty vs. brains as the standard with which they are to be viewed.

More interesting is Bretts character and how his experience of the war in Iraq affects his relationship with Juliet. In the scenes dealing with him, Oates seems to be at her best as she tackles what seems to be a central concern of the novel: the effect of the USs war on terror on the lives of average Americans. It is deeply telling for example, that in an imaginary letter to Brett, Juliet writes: Very few people in Carthage know the difference if there is a difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. I know: for I am your fiance and it is necessary for me to know.

Revelations such as these hint at the wide disparity between the perceptions and concerns of American civilians, and the national rhetoric of a country waging a prolonged international war. This is perhaps also why when Brett returns from the Iraqi Freedom Operation, deeply traumatised, his face disfigured and his body disabled, Juliet is unable to understand Bretts new, nihilistic stance towards life. As he says: its a toss of the dice. Who gives a shit who lives, who dies.

The reader realises that for Brett the faade of patriotic zeal and loyalty has completely fallen apart. Yet, on a larger level, his drastic transformation from a young, friendly boy to an embittered war hero a hero who often displays an affinity for violence appears to be a metaphor for the invisible, deeply psychological changes that a collective American nation has undergone.

Over the course of the novel, the reader finds herself asking: in a life filled with such insecurity and fear, a life in which the freedom of the individual is constantly restricted by the larger communitys imperative, what is the right way to live life? To give yourself up, as Brett does, for national duty and to be shattered physically and emotionally in the process? To live cocooned in a secure and comforting family life as the Mayfields did before Cressidas disappearance? Or, to run away, to vanish, as Cressida did, escaping both her family and the oppressive, intrusive community she felt suffocated by.

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REVIEW: The scars of war - Magazine - DAWN.COM

A quick introduction to Plaid Cymru – Free Speech: Series 4 Episode 2 – BBC Three – Video

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A quick introduction to Plaid Cymru - Free Speech: Series 4 Episode 2 - BBC Three
http://www.bbc.co.uk/freespeech Do you know who to vote for? Can you tell the difference between the parties? Here #39;s our effort to introduce Plaid Cymru in under a minute.

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A quick introduction to Plaid Cymru - Free Speech: Series 4 Episode 2 - BBC Three - Video

Free Speech Outside the Abortion Clinic

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The Supreme Court has given pro-life advocates free rein, even if it distresses patients. But getting people to listen is more complicated.

When Kelsey McLain, then a 25-year-old in the midst of the first trimester of her pregnancy, arrived at the abortion clinic closest to her home, her car couldnt get past the entrance of the parking lot. Protestors loomed toward the front of her vehicle. The group of 12 wielded signs covered in photos of aborted fetuses with the word murder printed across them in big block letters. McLains mother was behind the wheel, and with her foot on the brake, she gave the road blockers a choice of moving or getting run over.

The encounter didnt end after the protesters moved off to the side. As McLain got out of the car, louder shouts greeted her, accusing her of turning her back, of not wanting to know the truth. She felt growing anger but resisted the urge to lash out. She dashed inside the clinic, her mother close behind. It wasnt what I needed to deal with that day, McLain recalls.

In the clinics waiting room, McLain noticed that many of the patients seemed rattled. At that point, all they knew was that there were people outside and they were screaming at them. They didnt know their motivations or if they were good or bad people. As a woman with a self-proclaimed interest in reproductive rights, McLain had thought she was prepared for what she was going to face when she arrived at the clinic. But she, too, felt jarred. Protesters are always going to be a scary thing, no matter how much knowledge you have about them, she says.

Today, McLain witnesses pro-life activism on a weekly basis, when she volunteers as a clinic escort. Her role is to offer patients moral and physical support as they make their way past protestors, some of them quietly praying, others approaching the women with an intensity that that borders on harassment. She says protesters are quick to remind escorts and clinic staff that theyre legally entitled to be there. They comment to us that they have great lawyers, and they know their rights, and if we ever violate their right to free speech, theyll sue us, she says.

In June 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law forbidding protesters from standing within 35 feet of the entrance to a reproductive health care facility. After that decision came down, the demand for escorts like McLain sharply increased, says Marty Walz, the recently retired CEO of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. The protesters definitely have greater access to our patients, right up to the front door, Walz says. And they take advantage of it. When the buffer zone was in place, the Boston clinic used escorts only on Friday and Saturdayits busiest days. Now, every day, a swarm of people descends on the building. Along with the patients, the protesterswho now number anywhere from 20 to 80 each day and the pedestrians, there are 20 to 30 additional escorts at the Boston clinic.

This growing horde of people has made the atmosphere outside the clinic tenser, more chaotic, and in general, a lot less comfortable for the patients, says Sarah Cyr-Mutty, the community relations coordinator at the Boston clinic and a regular clinic escort. No one wants to drive up to their doctors office and see over 100 people standing outside.

The activists are now able to walk right up to patientspraying, pleading, and handing out flyers. They can follow women up to the clinics doors, which means that once the patients are in the waiting room, they can still hear the chants from outside. As such, Cyr-Mutty says that the patients she escorts through the clinics doors now are often in need of more consoling than they were before the Courts decision. Whether theyre just a presence outside, or theyre really trying to interact with them, its always really upsetting to the patient.

But apart from the commotion, its not clear how much has changed since the Supreme Courts ruling in McCullen v. Coakley nine months ago. Theres no evidence that activists are succeeding in changing womens minds. What is succeeding is the one thing the Supreme Court intended: People who believe abortion is murder are able to share that message with those who least want to hear it.

It is no accident that public streets and sidewalks have developed as venues for the exchange of ideas, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the Courts opinion. Even today, they remain one of the few places where a speaker can be confident that he is not simply preaching to the choir. With respect to other means of communication, an individual confronted with an uncomfortable message can always turn the page, change the channel, or leave the Web site. Not so on public streets and sidewalks.

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Free Speech Outside the Abortion Clinic

Aamir Khan wants ‘FREEDOM of Speech’ | India’s Daughter | AIB Knockout Controversy | CENSORSHIP – Video

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Aamir Khan wants #39;FREEDOM of Speech #39; | India #39;s Daughter | AIB Knockout Controversy | CENSORSHIP
Mr. Perfectionist Aamir Khan is NOT in favour of any censorship at all and believes in freedom of speech! Watch as the actor opens his heart out to this sensitive issue. For more Bollywood...

By: BollywoodCIA

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Aamir Khan wants 'FREEDOM of Speech' | India's Daughter | AIB Knockout Controversy | CENSORSHIP - Video